.m4v video for iPod/iPhone
Seoul, Korea
20th September 2010
Track listing:
1. nightwater 12:49
Catalogue
T-Phone 3 – Jana Winderen “nightwater”
TO:81 – Philip Jeck “An Ark for the Listener”
CD in jewel case
Photography & Design: Jon Wozencroft
TouchShop exclusive – this CD is released elsewhere on 20th September 2010
Mastered by Denis Blackham
The cover shows Mirosław Bałka’s installation at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, “How It Is”, April 2010.
Plus bonus 320kbps .mp3 download – 1 track – 30:59
TO:81DL – Philip Jeck “Live at Corsica Studios”, recorded on 1st July 2010.
This performance was recorded straight to digital from the main desk.
Track listing:
1. Pilot/Dark Blue Night 8:47
2. Ark 4:21
3. Twentyninth 2:36
4. Dark Rehearsal 7:36
5. Thirtieth/Pilot Reprise 2:56
6. The All of Water 8:29
7. The Pilot (Among Our Shoals) 4:33
coda:
8. All That’s Allowed (Released) 3:24
9. Chime, Chime (Re-rung) 7:34
Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes genuinely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick.
Philip Jeck writes: “A version of “An Ark For The Listener” was first performed at Kings Place London on 24/02/2010. It is a meditation on verse 33 of “The Wreck of the Deutschland”, Gerard Manley Hopkins poem about the drowning on December 7th 1875 of five Franciscan nuns exiled from Germany. This CD version was recorded at home in Liverpool and used extracts from live performances over the last 12 months. The “coda:” tracks are remixes of 2 pieces from “Suite: Live in Liverpool”. “Chime, Chime (Re-rung)” was originally made for Musicworks magazine (#104, Summer 09) and “All That’s Allowed (Released)” is previously unreleased. All tracks were made using Fidelity record-players, Casio SK1 keyboards, Sony mini-disc recorders, Behringer mixers, Ibanez bass guitar, Boss delay pedal and Zoom bass effects pedal.”
An Ark… is Jeck’s 6th solo album for touch since ‘Loopholes’ in 1995. The Wire reckoned it was ‘Stoke’ (Touch, 2002) which ‘made him great, but his body of work and his achingly brilliant live sets are rapidly defining him as one of our best artists, and his recent award from The Paul Hamlyn Foundation confirms him as such.
Philip Jeck studied visual art at Dartington College of Arts. He started working with record players and electronics in the early ’80’s and has made soundtracks and toured with many dance and theatre companies as we as well as his solo concert work. His best known work “Vinyl Requiem” (with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180 ’50’s/’60’s record players won Time Out Performance Award for 1993. He has also over the last few years returned to visual art making installations using from 6 to 80 record players including “Off The Record” for Sonic Boom at The Hayward Gallery, London [2000). In 2010 he won one of The Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Composition.
Tone 41 – Hildur Gudnadottir “Mount A”
CD in digipak
Photography & Design: Jon Wozencroft
Remastered by Denis Blackham
Track listing:
1. Light
2. Floods
3. Casting
4. Shadowed
5. Self
6. Growth
7. In Gray
8. My
9. Reflection
10. Earbraces
11. You
This album was originally released by 12 Tónar in 2006 under the moniker ‘Lost in Hildurness’. The first solo recording from Hildur Guðnadóttir (who is a member of the Nix Noltes band and has performed regularly with múm and Pan Sonic). In her dreamy soundworld she plays the cello, gamba, zither, khuur and the gamelan so this cd sounds like nothing else. This is exciting, tranquil, and melancholic stuff and at times it makes you think of a lost place and times gone by – and the music has the power to take you there. Recording sessions took place both in New York and in a house in Hólar, Iceland, specifically chosen for its good cello acoustics. It is strictly a solo album, Hildur has attempted to “involve other people as little as I could.” Like the cover art, it is personal and intimate.
It has been called “the perfect soundtrack to get lost in a forest at night”, but this version, remastered by Denis Blackham, sounds fresher and better than ever.
Her latest solo album, the widely reviewed and highly acclaimed Without Sinking (Touch # TO:70, 2009) is still available from Touch.
TO:80DS – ELEH “Repose”
Track listing:
1. Circle Two: Coastal Rotation For Dune Loop 17:12
Circle Two: Coastal Rotation For Dune Loop is a new 17 minute composition debuted at 2010’s Mutek festival in Montreal. This piece completes the Retreat/Return trilogy with Repose. A limited edition vinyl version of this track is released on 14.07.10 on Important.
Exclusive digital download – (MP3 or FLAC)
TS10 – Philip Jeck & Marcus Davidson “Spliced”
7″ vinyl only, not available for digital download
Cut by Jason @ Transition
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Track listing:
A: London Tenderberry 4:09
B: Tenderberries Version 4:22
Live at the The Museum of Garden History, London, 8 May 2009.
Keyboards: Marcus Davidson. Record players, editing & overdubbed bass: Philip Jeck.
“Trains of blossom, trains of music.”
Philip Jeck studied visual art at Dartington College of Arts. He started working with record players and electronics in the early ’80’s and has made soundtracks and toured with many dance and theatre companies as we as well as his solo concert work. His best kown work “Vinyl Requiem” (with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180 ’50’s/’60’s record players won Time Out Performance Award for 1993. He has also over the last few years returned to visual art making installations using from 6 to 80 record players including “Off The Record” for Sonic Boom at The Hayward Gallery, London [2000]. Philip Jeck works with old records and record players salvaged from junk shops turning them to his own purposes. He really does play them as musical instruments, creating an intensely personal language that evolves with each added part of a record. Philip Jeck makes geniunely moving and transfixing music, where we hear the art not the gimmick. His latest album for Touch is due in the summer of 2010.
Marcus Davidson was a chorister at Worcester Cathedral. He read Music at Birmingham University, studying composition with Vic Hoyland, and later received a masters degree in composition at City University, London, studying with Rhian Samuel. Marcus has worked particularly in the fields of music for dance and music-comedy, arranging and writing for stage, radio, video and television. He specialises in playing for Ballet and Contemporary Dance at London professional schools, and is a member of Spire, the Organ based project by Touch. Spire has performed at the Hardingtonar Festival 2008, York Minster in 2007, the Festival of Holland 2006, the Fuse Leeds 2006 contemporary music festival, the Gas Festival 2005 in Stockholm, La Batie Festival 2004 in Geneva, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3. He has recorded an album of Celtic-inspired music, Ribbon of Time, with Rob Millner, and is also writing a ballet.
Here the two artists collaborate on vinyl for the first time…
TS09 – Lawrence English “Incongruous Harmonies”
7″ vinyl only, not available for digital download
Cut by Jason @ Transition
Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft
Track listing:
A: Without Sanctuary 4:59
B: One Thousand Miles of White 4:24
These pieces were composed for Circa’s Regarding the Joy of Others.
Recorded and produced at 158, Brisbane, 09/09-01/10
Lawrence English is media artist, composer and curator based in Australia. Working across an eclectic array of aesthetic investigations, English’s work prompts questions of field, perception and memory. He utilises a variety of mediums including live performance, audio/visual environments, found sound/vision to create his work that typifies his interests in creating experiences that create subtle transformation of space and ask audiences to become aware of that which exists at the edge of perception. English’s work over the past decade, both in performative and gallery settings, has earned him a strong reputation as one of the unique voices producing sound artworks from within Australia. He has presented concerts and installed pieces for numerous festivals including Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Observatori (Spain), Outro_Rio (Brazil), Unsound (Poland) and AltMusic (New Zealand) amongst others. He also curates the burgeoning ROOM40 imprint, the Someone Good label and organises numerous events and festival throughout Oceania. His solo album, Kiri No Oto [Touch # Tone 31] was released in 2009 and has been described variously as “gorgeous”, “A great piece of subconscious architecture” and “sublime”.
TD01 – Biosphere & Jon Wozencroft “Substrata 2.1”
A3 archival print edition + exclusive digital download (MP3 or FLAC)
Image printed on 225gsm Somerset Photo Satin – this has the feel of watercolour paper, but captures the colour and detail extremely well. Hand numbered and signed (by Jon Wozencroft), limited to 100 copies.
A3 archival print | Jon Wozencroft “The Planet is Blue”
The picture was taken from a vantage point in Taormina, Sicily, in April 2001. 1000s of people must have taken a photograph from this spot, so it surprises me that many people single this out as one of their favourite Touch covers and I don’t disagree – how can one take heed of the other versions that will never be seen?
There were no postcards on sale. So instead of playing on the idea of “the photographic moment”, possibly this is a place that conjures up “the photographic universal”.
Giardini Naxos, a railway hub beneath Mount Etna, as seen from Taormina which has amazing food, a Roman amphitheatre and a film festival. I liked the idea of people swimming next to a railway station.
I was overjoyed to get the chance to do a cover for “Substrata”. It is one of my favourite recordings of its time (the progressive year, 1997) and I’d observed how it had such a climatic effect… I’d listened to it, amazed, on holiday in Crete that summer, it became a hot record for me, whilst supposedly being from a cold environment.
Maybe Biosphere was the answer to dub reggae, especially the music of Augustus Pablo. One of the best compliments I was ever paid, came from a friend when she said the Newcastle concert on the 2001 tour was mixed like a Pablo version… Now I’m glad that these versions bear this out, vividly. King Tubby Meets the Rockers in a Coldhouse?
Instinctively, I shot this on 35mm tungsten film which gives it a blue cast, which was an attempt to get a “Day for Night” ambience, (referring to the film by Truffaut). What I didn’t realise was how difficult this would be to print. We scanned it as RGB to get the detail and colour saturation, then we had to work out how to satisfy the CMYK format. There was hardly anything in the black channel.
Taormina features a lot in the film “Le Grand Bleu” (The Big Blue) by Luc Besson. It’s about deep sea diving. It seemed to me an interesting counterpoint to Geir’s love of the mountains, to think of the equivalent below the waterline. [Jon Wozencroft, May 2010]
Audio | Biosphere “Substrata 2.1”
1. Double Exposure 6:38
2. Infinium 7:07
3. The Things I Tell You 8:06
Track Notes:
Double Exposure
File saved: 16.May 2000, 14:08, Lunheim, Tromsdalen
A rebuild of an old track with none of the original elements left.
Infinium
File saved: 8. June 1995, 18:17, Varden, Tromsø
A track that later split into “Hyperborea” and a remix for James.
The Things I Tell You v.4
File saved: 13. September 1995, 21:04, Alarmveien, Tromsdalen
Almost there. Version 5 ended up on the Substrata album.
Spire 3 – Daniel Menche “Hover”
320kbps MP3 – 2 tracks – 27:36
Download-only
2 tracks – 30 piece teenage choir and organ
Track listing:
1. Hover 19:29
2. As Is 8:07
As part of the Spire project, Touch is pleased to announce this download-only release by Daniel Menche.
“I work at a high school library here in Portland, Oregon. Once a week there’s a choir class and occasionally I will poke my head in to hear the fantastic sounds of the kids singing. The singing can be a bit rusty mainly due to the shyness factor in their young voices and the reluctant learning of the music notation from the choir teacher. I really liked hearing that rough-awkward singing from the kids and it remind me of myself being in a choir as a little kid and remembering how much I HATED IT! Mainly because I didn’t understand music notation… nor did I want to and also I was incredibly shy just like these kids.
Well anyways I’m always thinking of ways to get young folks to have fun with sound and such and also I had an idea to use these fine choir students for a recording utilizing their awkward singing sounds. My strategy for the kids was vowels because every kid knows vowels! A-E-I-O-U and just sing those letters as long as possible is what I will instruct the kids to do. I mentioned to the choir teacher that I will be coming in and taking ten minutes of the student’s time to record them for a recorded composition and the teacher approved with this idea but she was also very confused. How can I be a known recording musician and not know about music notation such as ‘flat C or sharp D’ or whatever that jargon is. I told them… “Don’t worry… kids will have fun and it’ll sound fantastic.” And so I barged into the classroom and hit record on my little recorder and began the vowel singing game with the kids. The sheer state of confusion on their young faces was rather beautiful and the singing was fantastic to my ears. I noticed immediately that they couldn’t get the low sounds very well because well… they’re kids and baritone sounds just aren’t in the picture yet for them. So I utilized a Hammond organ for the bass sounds for the final piece of music titled “HOVER”.
Included is the raw unedited “as is” recording document of myself having fun with the kids and getting sounds out of them for this “HOVER” recording. This raw recording has a charm to it of the kids being confused and having some fun. Teenage cathartic-ism to say the least. The look on the choir teacher’s face when I had everyone screaming in different vowels was priceless. I can see her facial expression screaming at me “Music notation blasphemy!!!”… I respond back “Yep, sure is and now look at all the smiles on our kids faces.”
You can preview an extract from this release in the TouchShop.
TO:73 – Jana Winderen “Energy Field”
CD – 3 tracks – 50m 11s
6-panel digipak
Photography by Jon Wozencroft
Track listing:
1. Aquaculture 18:00
2. Isolation/Measurement 12:11
3. Sense of Latent Power 20:04
Armed with four 8011 DPA hydrophones, DPA 4060 omni mics, a Telinga parabolic reflector mic and a Sound Devices 744T digital hard disk recorder, Jana Winderen studies and records wild places which have a particular importance in our understanding of the complexity and fragility of marine ecosystems.
The recordings were made on field trips to the Barents Sea (north of Norway and Russia), Greenland and Norway, deep in crevasses of glaciers, in fjords and in the open ocean. These elements are then edited and layered into a powerful descriptive soundscape. The open spaces of Greenland, northern winds, ravens and dogs in an icy landscape provide the setting for these haunting but dynamic pieces. Sounds of crustaceans, fish such as cod, haddock, herring and pollock recorded as they are hunting, calling for a mate or orientating themselves in their environment, are all included in the mix. The result is a powerful, mesmeric journey into the unseen audio world of the frozen north.
Artist statement:
“I like the immateriality of a sound work and the openness it can have for both associative and direct experience and sensory perception. I have been occupied with finding sounds from unseen sources of sound, like blind field recordings. Over the last four years I have collected recordings made by hydrophones, from rivers, shores and the ocean, and more recently also from glaciers in Greenland, Iceland and Norway. In the depths of the oceans there are invisible but audible soundscapes, about which we are largely ignorant, even if the oceans cover 70% of our planet. I am also experimenting with different types of microphones to collect sounds which are not obviously recognisable, but give room for broader, more imaginative readings. I use these sounds as source material for composition in a live environment or to create installations, currently also for film, radio, CD and vinyl productions.”
Artist biography:
Jana Winderen is an artist educated in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London, and with a background in mathematics, chemistry and fish ecology from the University in Oslo, Norway. She has since 1993 worked as an artist, curator and producer. She currently lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Her most recent sound works include “Evaporation” (2009) at TodaysArt festival in The Hague, Netherlands, “Sub Pelagic Voices”(2009) for ISCM World New Music Days, Sweden, “Colonisers of the undergrowth” at Botanic Sounds in Göteborg Botanic Gardens; “North Atlantic Drift” (2009) for JunKroom in Kyoto, Japan, based on hydrophone recordings in the Barents Sea; “freq_out 7” curated by CM von Hausswollf at the Happy New Ears festival in Belgium (2008); “Submerge” (2008) for Färgfabriken Norr, Sweden and the 6 channel sound installation “+4°C – from Folgefonna to the North Sea” (2007) at Sleppet during the centenary Greig07 in Norway.
She recently released the CD “Heated: Live in Japan” (2009) on Touch (UK), the audio cassette “The Noisiest Guys on the Planet”(2009) on Ash International (UK), the USB stick, “Ants”, the digital download “Submerged” (2009) on Touch and the 7 inch vinyl “Surface Runoff” (2008) on Autofact (USA). Future projects includes an audio commission for the AV festival and the Environmental Agency in Newcastle (UK) working with the river Coquet in Northumberland, the audio piece “The Land Between” for ‘The Morning Line’, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Istanbul 2010. Jana also works on a collaborating with ‘Mobile Homes’ for the performance ‘Passing Place’ in Norway and she is currently working on a commission for a permanent sound installation at the Knut Hamsun Centre in Hamarøy, Norway. Recently Jana’s underwater recording was played on BBC Radio 3’s “Late Junction”, and BBC Radio 4 followed Jana on her recording trip in the Barents Sea for the radio series “World on the Move”. Jana has exhibited and performed her work in Canada, Japan, USA, Spain, China, Thailand, France, Hungary, Italy, Denmark, England, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium and Sweden.
TO:80 – ELEH “Location Momentum”
CD – 4 tracks – 71 mins
Track listing:
1. HeleneleH 20:28
2. Linear To Circular/Vertical Axis 2:34
3. Circle One: Summer Transcience 13:33
4. Observation Wheel 11:33
5. Rotational Change For Windmill 12:18
Eleh has been an enigma since the first record under that name was released in 2006. In numbered editions with letterpressed sleeves, usually on Important Records from the U.S.A., these vinyl-only releases were evidently a labour of love and attention. Further recordings have been released on the labels Taiga and Touch, making 11 vinyl editions in all. Eleh began as long ago as 1999 as an exploration of analog synthesis, emphasising low frequency oscillation and resonant acoustic phenomenae. Eleh’s work highlights the physical presence of sound as it has been inspired by the physical world. Following the recent split 12 inch release, “Observations and Momentum”, Eleh has chosen to release the first digital recordings on Touch – “Location Momentum” in a set of five new recordings which will be made openly available on CD. “The stuff that Eleh sets in motion from whatever electronic sound generators he/she deploys represents a measured and methodical paring away of all that might appear superfluous, baroque and rococo. Each of the tracks here consists of just a handful and discrete (and discreet) but highly charged sound events that emerge, overlap, recede and reverberate at critical frequencies over extended durations. At certain crucial points this approach serves as a formula for opening a portal what david Top has referred to as the dark void, that spectral realm magicked into being (or exposed by) the drone, in which audio apparitions and chimeras dance through smoke and mirrors, suggesting the existence of occult planes and dimensions, multiple other realities, worlds within worlds.” (Tony Herrington in The Wire)
T-Phone 1 – Biosphere “Outside By The Fjord”
1 track .m4v video, digital download for iPod/iPhone
Track listing:
1: Outside By The Fjord – 25m09s
From a field recording trip in Sørfjorden, near Tromsø, Norway.
Commissioned by Fondazione Musica per Roma, 2008.
TO:77 – BJNilsen “The Invisible City”
CD – 8 tracks – 1:04:57
Jewel case with concertina insert
Artwork & Photography by Jon Wozencroft
Plus bonus 320kbps .mp3 download – 1 track – 33:44
TO:77DL – BJNilsen “Live at Café Oto”, Atmospheres 3, 7.xii.09
Available only when purchasing “The Invisible City” via the TouchShop.
Track listing:
1. Gravity Station
2. Phase and Amplitude
3. Scientia
4. Virtual Resistance
5. Meter Reading
6. Into Its Coloured Rays
7. Gradient
8. The Invisible City
About this release:
Recorded and Mixed during 2008-2009 in Berlin.
All tracks composed by BJNilsen using Tape Recorders, Computer, Organ, Acoustic Guitar, Electronics, Viola, Subharchord. Field recordings from; Sweden, Iceland, Norway, UK, Japan, Portugal and Germany. The Subharchord was recorded in the EAM Studio @ Adk, Berlin. Viola played by Hildur I. Gudnadottir.
Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd.
Tone 39 – ELEH/Nana April Jun “Observations & Momentum”
Vinyl LP – 2 tracks
Track listing:
1. ELEH – Slow Fade for Hard Sync
2. Nana April Jun – Sun Wind Darkness Eye
About 18 months ago, we were advised of some interesting activity online concerning the nom de bruit of Swedish artist Christofer Lamgren, Nana April Jun; we didn’t know it at the time, because the authorship was something of a mystery. We produced a CD together, The Ontology of Noise in Feb 2009 [Touch # Tone 37], in which one track, particularly, stood out as being perfect for a vinyl edition. In the same timeframe, the series of releases by Eleh on Important Records attracted our attention. These homages to La Monte Young, Pauline Oliveros and Charlemagne Palestine, vinyl-only limited editions stunned us with their acuity and passion for detail… There was something other in the sound. Eleh, also, is an artist who prefers the work to speak for itself, and has other ideas about noise. The digital is questioned by a commitment to a working practice based around analogue tone-generators and letterpress printed covers. The Important Records/Taiga releases are now sought after with a passion by anyone who recognises something truly special occuring. On this new record, Eleh develops the waveforms that the Important Records series started. The split vinyl format is a great meeting point for this idea of digital persona and analogue privacy. The effect, we hope, is for the vinyl to represent a digital question… That this LP summons up a universal sound and an intimate sphere of operations… Which is of course a continuing dilemma. Here is a great opportunity to hear Eleh and Nana April Jun at their finest. Stricly limited edition.
TO:72 – Mika Vainio “Black Telephone of Matter”
CD Album
7 tracks – 54:38
Artwork by Jon Wozencroft
This is Mika Vainio’s 4th solo album for Touch, after Onko [Touch # TO:34, 1997], Kajo [Touch # TO:43, 2000] and In The Land Of The Blind, One-Eyed Is King [Touch # TO:54, 2003]. He is, of course, part of Pan Sonic with Ilpo Väisänen, and also records solo as Ø.
Track list:
1. Roma A.D. 2727
2. Silencés Traverses Des Mondes Et Des Anges
3. Bury A Horse’s Head
4. In A Frosted Lake
5. Swedenborgia
6. A Measurement Of Excess Antenna Temperature At 4080 Ml/S
7. The Breather
TO:71 – Robert Hampson “Vectors”
CD – 3 tracks – 50:20
Tracklist
1. Umbra
2. Ahead – Only The Stars
3. Dans Le Lointain
Umbra: creation, commande du GRM 2006 for Présences Électroniques Festival, Radio France, Paris
Ahead – Only The Stars: creation, commande du Vibro 2007 for carte blanche au label Vibro Festival, Planetarium ECM Mendes France, Poitiers
Dans Le Lointain: creation, commande du GRM 2008 for Akousma Radio France, Paris.
Recorded at Thirst.
Mixed and mastered at GRM Studio 116A, Maison De Radio France.
Umbra (2006) – is the second commission for GRM. This 16 channel piece had it’s debut performance on the Acousmonium – GRM’s speaker orchestra – at Salle Olivier Messiaen, Maison de Radio France, Paris “The umbra (Latin: shadow) is the darkest part of a shadow. From within the umbra, the source of light is completely concealed by the occulting body. In astronomy, an observer in the umbra is said to be in the shadows experiencing total eclipse.” This phenomenon is a direct influence on the work in the sense of the way that sounds are cast in the shadow of others, slowly becoming more distinct and featured as the piece progresses, materialising and then casting a shadow of their own.
Ahead – Only The Stars (2007) – commissioned by Vibrö for a performance at the Planetarium de Poitiers in 7.1 Surround ratio. Inspired and dedicated to the Astronauts of the NASA Mercury Missions space program and possibly the greatest pilot ever, Chuck Yeager. After the introduction of jets blasting across the soundstage, the piece is then interspersed with radio transmissions (Com. bleeps and static, with dialogue removed) that form the framework.
Dans le Lointain (2008) – the third commission for GRM. A 2 channel Stereo piece, it’s debut performance on the Acousmonium – GRM’s speaker orchestra – at Salle Olivier Messiaen, Maison de Radio France, Paris. Sounds of Shortwave radios, recorded by Hampson in the very early 80’s and recently rediscovered on a cassette, are manipulated through very traditional techniques utilised by early tape experimental works of the GRM and collected with more modern forms of digital manipulation. The title (In The Distance) refers to the distance radio signals can travel, but also the distance of time that elapsed since the shortwave recordings were made on a four track recorder and dubbed onto cassette by Hampson around 1981/82.
Tone 38 – Biosphere “Wireless – Live at The Arnolfini, Bristol”
Touch # Tone 38
CD in Digipak – 62:12
Artwork & Design: Jon Wozencroft
Recorded live at The Arnolfini, Bristol, 27th October 2007 by the doyen of sound recordists, Chris Watson, using 2 x Sony ECM 77s with a Nagra P11 Ares flash card recorder, and from desk to hard drive. The recording was mixed, edited and mastered by Touch stalwart BJNilsen, in Berlin during March 2009.
This concert was part of Touch 25 Live, which also featured a performance of Storm [by Chris Watson & BJNilsen]. Biosphere is Norwegian composer and performer Geir Jenssen, and this is his sixth release for Touch. In the early 1990s he was a pioneer of so-called “ambient techno”, but since then, he has refined his sound into something more magnetic and enduring. His last album, Dropsonde, wasn’t a soundtrack like the interwoven Substrata, nor an episodic journey in the way that Autour de la Lune is. It pushed new directions towards the jazz colors of Miles Davis and Jon Hassell, while re-invigorating the pulse and projection of his signature sound: a hypnotic combination of pleasure and dread. Here Geir Jenssen takes this further, incorporating samples of field recordings by Jony Easterby and trumpet by Anders Karlskås, invoking a sparser, more arresting sound. A landmark release for Biosphere, his first live album, heralding new beginnings without jettisoning the past…
TO:68DS – Jon Wozencroft A3 print / Rosy Parlane – “Willow”
A3 print + digital download
A3 print
Features an image (depicted to the right) by Jon Wozencroft, output onto high quality heavyweight matte paper.
Digital download
320 kpbs MP3, available only when purchasing the Willow print…
Rosy Parlane – “Willow” 4:29
Written and recorded in Auckland, NZ Jan-Mar 2008
TO:70DS – Hildur Gudnadottir “Iridescence”
1 Track digital download
Track list:
Iridescence 11:20
Download-only. Featuring Jóhann Jóhannsson & Skúli Sverrisson, this release follows on from her solo album, Without Sinking [Touch # TO:70, 2009].
Mixed and mastered by BJNilsen, Berlin, February 2009.
Image by Jon Wozencroft.
Tone 36DS – Jana Winderen “Submerged”
1 Track digital download
Track list:
Submerged 6:35
Download-only. This release follows on from her debut solo album, Heated: Live in Japan [Touch # Tone 36, 2009]. Submerged was made for an installation for Darkness Descends: Norwegian Art Now in New York City, 5-8 March 2009.
Mastered by Denis Blackham @ Skye, February 2009.
Image by Jon Wozencroft.